OK so you are in the tech section cause youve got a problem with your whatever and need some help to sort it out
Now unless you are here to ask how to rebuild the transfer in your 09 GV chances are something close to related to your problem has been covered before and you might find some info in another thread started sometime in the last 4 years, given that most of us have cars 15 to 25 years old chances are most of the probs are going to be pretty common to all of them.
A good way to find some of this info is the search function
http://www.auszookers.com/index.php?nam ... ile=search
With this feature you are able to punch in certain keywords and it will go look through every post in the sections you specify and show you the matches, pretty useful but it can also be pretty painful if you are vague in your quest cause some people talk a little too much and bullshit a bit much too so you might find a heap of dribble, but dont despair its easy to get what you need
In the section for keyword it looks at what you type a few ways, if you were to type why should stekky call it buttercup? it would find every post that contains ANY of those words, so probably every thread here, if you were to type stekky and buttercup it would only show threads that have both of those words (and is telling it to find both words together)
You can also narrow it down a bit more be selecting only the tech section to search, this can be a good idea along with trying to be pretty specific and use as many keywords as possible, example sierra and wont and idle and solenoid could give useful threads on sierras not idling due to teh solenoid being broken, typing carby problem is pretty well going to give you threads on knitting
Its also useful to select display results as posts not topics as it shows you the post that matches rather than threads that could well be labelled my headlights dont work, I like to then scroll the posts and right click open in new tab for all the ones that look good to read through
Should you find you get a lot of results and cant be bothered looking, try adding more keywords to narrow it down, or perhaps pay somebody to fix it cause youll never be patient enough to work it out anyway.
If you find you dont get a lot of results try removing a few words to widen it a bit, also worth trying Carby, carb, carbie and so on to get the thread that will help you.
Now what to do if you find something!
Say you find a thread thats close but not quite and its from 2007, dont be afraid to reply to it and ask for more clarification, the original posters might not even be around to reply or even remember it but somebody else might recognise the problem talked about and with your extra info to that might have the answer, which then makes a thread thats already been useful a few times even more useful for people further on, if you were to start a new thread saying I found a thread but it wasnt quite right then people are going to ask the same questions in the other thread so wastes time and less people are likely to reply to basic stuff thats been around before.
Dont be afraid to start a new thread anyway, afterall this is a forum and forums are for discussions, if it was just for info for people to find it would be a wiki and nobody would need to ever type, just remember though as you are the person looking for info so you are the one that needs to do the leg work, nobody has any obligation to go out of their way to help you, they all do it for the love of the car but as time goes on and people see themselves saying the same thing over and over they are less likely to go in depth with their answers, especially if they have already spent a lot of time putting the info out there.
Now how can other members in general also help you in your quest for help? its human nature to try and help and different people go about it different ways, chances are somebody reading your thread has the same problem and might chip in with what they have tried that didnt work, thats still some good info for you and doesnt mean it wont help, some people may have read a thread similar at some time and post their opinion of what happened last time, it would be great if people dont have a factual answer to not do this and confuse people but rather try and remember the thread and search for it and post a link in the thread for reference, which will also help the next dude along searching for stuff (Google also thinks its awesome) Some people will also go geez been there typed that before not doing it again STFUN00b, rather than doing that it would be great if you could link to that thread for them, cause you typed it chances are you can remember a string of words to search for to find it a lot quicker than anyone else
Another thing thats really going to help in your search for knowledge is to look listen and read, remember back to the bit where you are asking of other people to help you and they having no obligation to do so? chances are if you start a thread about something and there is already a thread about the same thing going on your going to hear a lot of crickets in your thread, unless some people really want to be nice to you.
This is not a dig at anyone, this is not an excuse for anyone to go all grimbo and tell people to search (infact I think if anyone posts nothing in a thread but crap about doing a search they may find posting anymore hard to do) its about making use to all the info already here to help you get an answer as fast as you can and not waiting for other people to get here with an answer, afterall there are some smart people put finger to keyboard here before
